1842, GIUSEPPE VERDI'S 'NABUCCO' PREMIERED IN MILAN

Tina Picotes is still visiting The Grandma at her home. Yesterday, they watched silent films and talked about cinema and today, they have decided to talk about opera because both of them love it. They have been talking about Nabucco, the opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi that was premiered on a day like today in Milan in 1842.

Nabucco (short for Nabucodonosor) is an Italian-language opera in four acts composed in 1841 by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera.

The libretto is based on the biblical books of 2 Kings, Jeremiah, Lamentations and Daniel and the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornu. However, Antonio Cortese's ballet adaptation of the play with its necessary simplifications, given at La Scala in 1836, was a more important source for Solera than was the play itself. Under its original name of Nabucodonosor, the opera was first performed at La Scala in Milan on 9 March 1842.

Nabucco is the opera that is considered to have permanently established Verdi's reputation as a composer.

He commented that this is the opera with which my artistic career really begins. And though I had many difficulties to fight against, it is certain that Nabucco was born under a lucky star.

The opera follows the plight of the Jews as they are assaulted, conquered and subsequently exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian king Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar II). The historical events are used as background for a romantic and political plot. The best-known number from the opera is the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate / Fly, thought, on golden wings, a chorus that is regularly given an encore in many opera houses when performed today.

The success of Verdi's first opera, Oberto, led Bartolomeo Merelli, La Scala's impresario, to offer Verdi a contract for three more works. After the failure of his second opera Un giorno di regno, completed in 1840 towards the end of a brutal two-year period during which both of his infant children and then his 26-year-old wife died, Verdi vowed never to compose again.

More information: Opera on Line

In An Autobiographical Sketch, written in 1879, Verdi tells the story of how he came to be twice persuaded by Merelli to change his mind and to write the opera. The distance of 38 years from the event may have led to a somewhat romanticized view; or, as Verdi scholar Julian Budden puts it: he was concerned to weave a protective legend about himself [since] it was all part of his fierce independence of spirit.

However, in Volere è potere [it] -written ten years closer to the event- the zoologist Michele Lessona provides a different account of the events, as allegedly recounted by Verdi himself.

After a chance meeting with Merelli close to La Scala, the impresario gave him a copy of Temistocle Solera's libretto which had been rejected by the composer Otto Nicolai.

Verdi describes how he took it home, and threw it on the table with an almost violent gesture. In falling, it had opened of itself; without my realizing it, my eyes clung to the open page and to one special line: 'Va pensiero, sull' ali dorate'.

While it has been noted that Verdi read it enthusiastically and certainly he states that, while he attempted to sleep, he was kept awake and read and re-read the libretto three times, others have stated that he read the libretto very reluctantly or, as recounted by Lessona, that he threw the libretto in a corner without looking at it any more, and for the next five months he carried on with his reading of bad novels... [when] towards the end of May he found himself with that blessed play in his hands: he read the last scene over again, the one with the death of Abigaille, which was later cut, seated himself almost mechanically at the piano... and set the scene to music.

Nevertheless, Verdi still refused to compose the music, taking the manuscript back to the impresario the next day. But Merelli would accept no refusal, and he immediately stuffed the papers back into Verdi's pocket and not only threw me out of his office, but slammed the door in my face and locked himself in.

Verdi claims that gradually he worked on the music: This verse today, tomorrow that, here a note, there a whole phrase, and little by little the opera was written so that by the autumn of 1841 it was complete. At the very least, both Verdi's and Lessona's versions end with a complete score.

The opera was an instant success, dominating Donizetti's and Giovanni Pacini's operas playing nearby. While the public went mad with enthusiasm, the critics tempered their approval of the opera.

More information: Live About

To copy the truth can be a good thing,
but to invent the truth is better, much better.

Giuseppe Verdi